Other shoe drops on Apple TV: hard drive is upgradeable
I'll let you in on a little TUAW secret: the reason we rarely post our own takeapart galleries of new Apple gear is that we like the products way too much to break them into little, un-warranty-covered pieces. Not to mention that we pay for them out of our own pockets. Anyway, our main topic of conversation today has been "Who's going to try to upgrade their Apple TV hard drive? Erica? David? Somebody break that sucker open and upgrade it!"Somebody did. Brave/foolhardy Apple TV owner Jonathan Bare cracked open his shiny pizza box and plopped in a 120 GB hard drive, exact methodology of brain transplant yet to be announced (I would lay money on a Disk Utility or CCC clone). So far, so good; the pictures are here.
[via Gizmodo]
Thanks Aron & all who sent this in.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Quix said 5:52PM on 3-23-2007
Why all the buzz about upgrading the Apple TV hard drive? I thought the vision was to stream all your content from a central source (i.e. your Mac) so you didn't have to store it next to your TV? I see the hard drive in the Apple TV as a temporary staging area and buffer device, not as the place where I want to permanently store all my media.
I checked out the Apple TV at my local Apple Store this morning, and I have to say I was extremely disappointed. The menus look great and navigation is smooth and intuitive. But the picture quality on all the demo material was horrible! TV shows, movies, music videos - they seemed little better than YouTube quality. OK, I exaggerate for dramatic effect, but honestly, it all looked really bad. The TVs were Sony HD units, between 30 & 40". Even when I stepped back 6 or 7 feet, the picture quality still looked bad. Which is odd, because I've been downloading Battlestar Galactica to my iPod this season and watching it on my 57" rear projection and have been mostly satisfied. Not thrilled, but satisfied.
Until Apple goes high-def, I'll stay away. And no digital surround sound? What the hey??? I expect more from Apple. Much more.
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Tedious said 5:53PM on 3-23-2007
It runs OSX.
Dropping Perian.org's plugin into /Library/Quicktime gives full DiVX support! Woohoo!
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Dennis said 6:44PM on 3-23-2007
Quix, the content must somehow have been of low bitrate. I watched some home-made content on a 36" LCD last night using AppleTV and it looked stunning. This micro Mac is going to have some interesting uses.
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ollyt said 7:07PM on 3-23-2007
Hey Nice One. Just noticed in iTunes an Other section to the disk usage. Now on an iPod this means the content in the actual Disk Mode section of your iPod. Does this mean the Apple TV has a disk mode, or even NAS capabilities!!!
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Jonathan Allen said 7:55PM on 3-23-2007
this is pretty exciting. now if only apple was giving away a free HD screen with purchase like Sony in england.
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rich said 8:20PM on 3-23-2007
Next thing to try - install OS X (the full version of 10.4.9 Intel), Linux, XP, Vista, etc. on one of those things (and not the one sitting next to my TV at home).
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liquidmark said 11:31PM on 3-23-2007
I'm with Rich.It would be AWESOME if I could run FULL OSX on that thing like it were a regular Mac.
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Bruce Taylor said 11:41PM on 3-23-2007
I picked one up today, it's growing on me already. the video delivered to the apple stores was not great quality at all, so don't let that perturb you too much.
As far as apple is concerned, from a DRM perspective the ATV is just a hybrid form of iPod. By giving it a HD it can sync to a machine that could later disconnect from the network thereby enabling the ATV to operate independently. Also in shared living spaces like dorm rooms you could connect to your machine in your room and watch your movies without any hassles.
I'm actually thinking of sticking one in my car, that way every time I come home it would automatically sync the latest content from the network.
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Aron Trimble said 11:46PM on 3-23-2007
you're welcome.
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Quix said 2:19AM on 3-24-2007
"the video delivered to the apple stores was not great quality at all, so don't let that perturb you too much" - Bruce
If that's the case, Apple better do something to rectify the situation, because I can't imagine anyone walking out of an Apple Store with an Apple TV in hand after seeing the jaggy garbage on the display units.
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Kichigai Mentat said 2:10AM on 3-26-2007
How to perform disk transfer for TV:
# dd /dev/disk1(or whatever the TV drive is) >/dev/disk2(Whatever the destination drive is)
All done!
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